Publications

I recently acquired a very nice collection of pre-1940 Chile that had been collected by SOFICH and cross-referenced by Scott. It clearly shows just how much room for expansion there is by collecting using this specialized work. The SOFICH catalogue is published by the Chilean Philatelic Society (Sociedad Filatelica de Chile). It is a lavish, […]

It is now ten years since Stanley Gibbons printed the fourth and current edition of their ‘Part 20’ South America stamp catalogue. And the separate ‘Part 15’ that covers Central America was last published in 2007. It looks like these are the final editions of these heavily referenced catalogues. Stanley Gibbons business has gone through […]

Although The Mainsheet covered all twenty republics, its focus was primarily on South America. In 1980, under the editorship of Bernard Davies, The Central American Newsletter was launched as a sister publication to The Mainsheet. Bernard edited until his death in 1985 when Mike Birks took over the helm. The CAN ran for twenty years, […]

If there is one thing philatelists are not short of it is reading material. Decades of book publishing has produced a wealth of literature on every subject imaginable and each month brings a swathe of new titles. Coupled to that, society magazines, articles, catalogues and the multitude of websites and forums and, well…you get the […]

Before we get to the content, I should point out that the beauty of this book is the author’s skill for taking a complicated subject and making it very simple to understand. There are countless philatelic books and articles that undertake to enlighten the reader on less complex issues but end up making things far […]

It’s taken a while but Scott is now recognizing Venezuela’s postal fiscals (or postage and revenue stamps) in the 2017 edition of its Classic Specialized Catalogue. This bumps up the number of stamps listed during the classic period to a further 67 items, all of them now prefixed under an “AR” code. AR1 through to […]